That's honorable, Damon said finally. But no, but that's genuinely honorable. He picked up his beer. I'm just wondering who told you that being careful and being honest are the same thing.
Marcus looked at him. Being careful, Damon said, is not saying the thing because you're afraid of the answer. Being honest is saying the thing and letting her decide. He shrugged.
You're conflating them, which is something scared people do. I'm not scared. Damon gave him the look. The look that said, I have known you for 15 years, and that is objectively not true.
Fine, Marcus said. I'm terrified. Of what specifically? Of being wrong about what I think is happening.
Of being right about what I think is happening, and of what comes after that? Of He stopped. He looked at his hands. She's extraordinary man.
Not in a not in the way that's about the title or the company or any of that. She's real. She's complicated and guarded. And she read corduroy to my daughter like it was the most important task she'd ever been handed.
And I don't. He exhaled. I don't know what to do with someone like that. I've only ever known how to keep my head down and survive.
Damon was quiet for a long moment. Marcus, he said, "Surviving stopped being enough for you a long time ago. You just kept accepting it because it felt safer than wanting something else." The front door opened. Victoria walked in.
She had her bag over one shoulder, and she was slightly flushed in the way of a person who'd been in a long, difficult meeting and was processing the residue of it. She stopped when she saw Damon. "Sorry," she said immediately. I didn't know you had company.
Victoria, this is Damon. He's been my friend since before I had any sense. That tracks, Damon said, standing and extending his hand with the easy warmth that was his natural state. I've heard a lot about you.
Victoria shook his hand and cut a look at Marcus that was precise and surgical. Nothing, Marcus said. I've said nothing. He said you were a tenant.
Damon said, which was technically true and entirely misleading. And he said it with a smile that communicated everything Marcus had specifically avoided saying. Can I get you a beer? It's Marcus's beer, but I'm offering it.
Victoria actually laughed. It was the real laugh, the surprised one. I'm okay. Thank you.
She looked at Marcus one more time, unreadable, but present, and went to her room. Damon sat back down and said nothing. He just looked at Marcus with the expression of a man who has made his point and does not feel the need to repeat it. Marcus said, "Not a word." Damon raised his beer.
He did not say a word. He didn't need to. The following Thursday was when everything stopped being careful. Marcus was in the living room working late when Victoria came in looking like she'd been in a war.
Not physically, she was composed on the surface because Victoria was always composed on the surface. But her eyes were doing the thing, that tight controlled thing that meant something had gotten through the wall. She sat down on the couch, not in the armchair, the couch 2 ft from where he was sitting, which she had never done before. Marcus closed his laptop.
He didn't ask. He waited. He was there, she said. at the conference today. Daniel, she said the name like a word she was removing a splinter with.
He was on the same panel. I didn't know. No one told me. I walked into that room and he was sitting at the table and he looked at me like like no time had passed, like I should just fold.
Did you? She turned to look at him. Something fierce moved through her face. No.
Good. I sat down. I gave my presentation. I answered every question.
And when it was over, he came up to me and he said, she stopped. She pressed her lips together. He said he misses me. He said he's been thinking about us.
He said he wants to try again. Her jaw tightened. He said I look like I'm struggling. Marcus went very still.
He said what? That I look like I'm struggling. She exhaled through her nose. He said, "Whatever I'm going through right now, he thinks I'm not." He said, "I don't look like myself." Marcus looked at her fully directly looked at her the way he hadn't let himself look since the night with the earring and the dress.
"He's wrong," he said. "I know he's wrong. You look exactly like yourself. You look like someone who made a hard choice and is doing the work of living with it.
That's not struggling. That's being honest." His voice was level, but there was something in it, a certainty that came from somewhere past politeness. He's not missing you. He's missing the version of you that was willing to be small enough to fit into what he needed.
The room was very quiet. Victoria looked at him for a long time without speaking. The expression on her face was the most unguarded he had ever seen it. Not sad, not afraid, just open, raw, real.
How do you do that? She said softly. Do what? Say the exact right thing immediately without thinking.
I'm thinking, he said. I'm just not afraid of the thought. She laughed that small surprised sound. And then she leaned her head back against the couch and looked at the ceiling and something in her shoulders let go some tension she had been carrying since before she walked through the door.
Maybe since before she walked into that conference room that morning. He asked if he could call me, she said to the ceiling. I didn't say yes, but I didn't say no. Marcus absorbed that.
He felt it land not as jealousy exactly, but as something adjacent to it, a recognition that the territory he was standing in was not his, and he had to be careful about how much space he took up in it. "What do you want?" he said. She lifted her head and looked at him. "I don't know yet." "Okay, does that bother you?" He held her gaze.